An Excellent Cover Crop Mix Ahead of Corn
Planting corn next spring? Choose the right cover crop in the fall to give your crop the maximum opportunity for high yields.
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Annual Ryegrass
Root Pit Reveals 40″ Cereal Rye Roots
I am blessed to hear from farmers around the world about their cover cropping adventures. One young man, Brian Scott, from Carroll County, Indiana has generously shared his information with me again this spring. This post is Brian’s report from early May, 2013. To see Brian’s photographs, click here. We dug a few pits in
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Cover Crops: Buy One Year, Get Another Year Free
Almost two years to the day I posted an article about Killing Tall Annual Ryegrass. The problem of a wet and chilly 2011 has resurfaced an ugly head to be a wet and COLD spring of 2013. But over the past week or so temperatures have warmed into the 70’s and 80’s with cover crop
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Part 3- Do Cover Crops Keep the Soil Colder in the Spring?
Fact or Fiction? Cover Crops that Survive the Winter Keep the Soil Colder in the Spring than Fall-Tilled Soil – Part 3 As of today (April 17, 2013) there is 0% corn planted in Iowa and Indiana with 1% in Illinois and Ohio. It is now wet and cold…not just cold. As my brother Don
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Part 2- Do Cover Crops Keep the Soil Colder in the Spring?
Fact or Fiction? Cover Crops that Survive the Winter Keep the Soil Colder in the Spring than Fall-Tilled Soil – Part 2 On Friday April 5, 2013 my brother Don recorded the temperatures in soils on our home farm near Greenwood, IN (central Indiana). The previous week Don took soil temperatures coming out of a
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Cover Crops are Working in Iowa
Cover crops are working in Iowa! While that may not mean much to my eastern corn belt friends it means a lot in Iowa and the upper Midwest. Working with Sarah Carlson from Practical Farmers of Iowa and Tom Kaspar from ARS at Ames, Iowa, we’ve been attempting to identify what cover crops will be
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Can Cover Crops Become Weeds?
In a previous post I wrote that cover crops can suppress weeds. And many farmers are planting them with that primary benefit in mind. But, can cover crops become weeds? Unfortunately, the answer is “yes, they can.” Obviously we never want this to happen on our farm. And with good management practices, we can lessen
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Be Aware of Dormant Seed in Cover Crops
As Oregon and other west coast farmers try to keep up with the demand of getting seed back to the Midwest from their newly harvested crops, we are beginning to see some potential issues with just-harvested seed. In the past, supply was usually greater than demand at harvest time. However, seed companies and farmers now
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